Here is more information about the agency, including who leads it, how many staff the department employs and what the department does as a whole.
FAST FACTS
Budget: Estimated at $3.9 billion overall, with a $149.6 million IT budget, according to Industry Navigator.*
Leadership: Martin Stevens is the agency’s chief information officer.
Staff: According to the department’s website, the agency has more than 2,900 full-time and 1,300 other personal services employees.
MORE ABOUT THE AGENCY
In addition to protecting the state’s “air, water and land,” the department’s focus is divided into three programs.
Land and recreation programs focus on acquiring and protecting state land for preservation and recreation, including overseeing “175 state parks and trails and more than 12 million acres of public lands and 4 million acres of coastal uplands and submerged lands.”
Regulatory programs focus on safeguarding “natural resources by overseeing permitting and compliance activities that protect air and water quality and manage waste cleanups.”
Lastly, ecosystem restoration programs aim to protect and improve water quality and aquatic resources, such as the Everglades, Florida’s springs and other coastal resources.
As for using technology, the department’s Office of Technology and Information Services (OTIS) will oversee the following initiatives over the next couple of years, according to its long-range program plan for fiscal years 2025 through 2029:
- Data-focused initiatives: Primarily, this involves increasing data literacy and proficiency in using the department’s data visualization tool to help answer environmental questions and inform operations improvements; providing support to program-area staff focused on data integration initiatives; and developing tools to streamline data acquisition.
- Application initiatives (program-focused): This set of initiatives focuses on implementing software to “improve permit processing, provide additional web-based self-service permitting options, collect environmental data more consistently and ... [expand] online services through the agency’s business portal.”
- Cloud migrations: So far, the department has migrated approximately 53 percent of its application portfolio to the cloud. OTIS plans to continue migrating to the cloud in the next few years to provide better built-in disaster recovery, scalability, cost savings, reliability and improved agility.
- Application modernization: Currently, the department’s applications include older technologies such as Oracle Forms and Active Server Pages. As a result, the agency is assessing applications running on these apps to decommission, replace or rewrite them using a modern application platform.
- Infrastructure modernization: Under this initiative, the agency plans to improve connectivity and IT infrastructure for on-site IT interfaces and point-of-sale services to better facilitate visitor interactions with the department’s parks.
ADDITIONAL NOTEWORTHY INFO
On Jan. 30, Industry Insider — Florida will be hosting its first member briefing with department CIO Stevens and Scott McPherson, the former CIO for the Florida House of Representatives.
The live Member Briefing is scheduled for 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Jan. 30 in Tallahassee at the Florida State Conference Center, Meeting Room 103. The briefing is open to members of Industry Insider. More details about the event and a registration link can be found online.
*Industry Navigator is a product of e.Republic, which also produces Industry Insider — Florida.
